Lion Tweaks review

Lets you tweak hidden Lion settings, and was created by a 16-year-old developer

Rating

Price

RRP: Free

Pros

Single window

easy to use

automatically relaunches

easy to return to defaults

18 Lion settings can be changed

Cons

None

Lion Tweaks review

As impressive as many of the features of Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) may be, the new OS isn’t without its flaws. And for some people, many of those are little changes that, collectively, affect the overall experience of using Mac OS X.

The good news is that many of these little changes can be tweaked to suit your preferences. However, while some options are available in System Preferences, many are buried so deeply that they require detailed knowledge of Terminal commands or the use of a third-party utility in order to tweak them.

Lion Tweaks, a free, simple utility created by 16-year-old developer Fredrik Wiker, gathers most of these Lion-specific modifications in a single window that lets you make changes by clicking a few buttons.

Launch Lion Tweaks, and you get a window listing the 18 settings you can use the utility to change, including Show the user library folder, Enable the 2D-Dock, the option to remove some of those unnecessary animations, the ability to change some backgrounds and aesthetic settings, and much more. While the developer offers online documentation describing these settings, some are a little on the brief side.

Note that if changing a setting requires you to quit or relaunch an affected app, Lion Tweaks will automatically perform that action for you. So, for example, changing the Dock’s 2D/3D appearance automatically relaunches the Dock, and changing Mail’s window animation automatically quits Mail.

OUR VERDICT

To return any setting to its Lion default, click No next to that setting. If you want to return all settings to their defaults, click the Reset To Lion Default button at the bottom of the window. Lion Tweaks is a simple, free way to tweak Lion to your liking. What’s not to like?